Features

Opera is an art form replete with tales. Find your way through narratives, adventures, and biographies. Find out how opera brings many streams of the arts together.

Operatunity
Operatunity
Orfeo, Garsington Opera
Orpheus and the power of song

Part human, part divine, Orpheus embodies the power of song. The sun god Apollo is said to have taught him his skills as a musician and poet. He deployed them to charm his contemporaries on earth but, beyond that, to gain entry to the forbidden territory of the underworld. It is no wonder that he became the emblem of the artist who transcends mundane cares and brings us closer to eternal verities.

Nor is it a surprise that Orpheus has been chosen by so many composers as a symbol of the artist, whose life’s work is to strive, to fail, but to be remembered, to become immortal. 

Centre de Perfeccionament Palau de Les Arts
The OperaVision Podcast

OperaVision next generation podcast series charts the journeys of singers on four young artist programmes across Europe – Oper Frankfurt, Palau de les Arts, the Rossini Opera Festival and Opera for Peace. Every month, stage director and podcaster Nina Brazier, brings you privileged backstage access to masterclasses, rehearsal rooms and dressing rooms.

Janáček and Brno are intimately linked
Wagner and Weill
Strong Women in Opera: Carmen

Since the opera's premiere almost 150 years ago, Carmen has dominated opera stages worldwide. A femme fatale who beguiles every man who meets her, and dare one add, every theatre-goer at that, she has become the poster girl for sexual liberation and the unconditional will to freedom. ‘Free I was born, and free I will die!’ she famously calls out right before she is stabbed to death by her jilted lover.

The detail of the pattern is movement
Understanding Moniuszko

An interview with director Ilaria Lanzino.

Sir Graham Vick 1953 - 2021
Il trovatore: an opera of the night
Verdi's Attila - The Territory of the Gods

History teaches us that Attila the Hun was a fearsome military leader, a ruthless and organised conqueror, the ‘scourge of God!’ Yet, in this opera, Attila is prey to wild dreams and victim of a priest in a white robe...

5 rediscovered operas